Aegis Mobility honoured with SPIFFY Award

Liam Britten5 years ago

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For their efforts at combating the risks of driving while talking on cellphones, Vancouver’s Aegis Mobility was honoured yesterday at the fouth annual Telecom Council SPIFFY Awards for their solution to the problem, DriveAssist.

DriveAssist is a mobile client that runs in the background of smartphones to remove the distraction of the phone while driving. It detects if a user is driving by measuring the phone’s displacement by GPS to determine if the user is driving, and if so, blocks incoming calls. Incoming calls go straight to voice mail, and the caller is told that the user is driving. Meanwhile, on the user’s end, there is no distracting ringing, so they are not even aware that a call is incoming, and what’s more, outgoing calls are impossible — except for 911 calls, of course.

DriveAssist is currently being marketed to two types of clients: fleet owners who want to make sure that their employees are driving responsibly, and in a way that reduces liability; and the parents of new drivers, who are often the most distracted by mobile devices. The product is also being marketed towards governments and their fleets, as well as individual consumers.

The SPIFFY Award that Aegis received yesterday comes from the Service Provider Forum (SPIF), and was awarded after a vote of Telecom Council members, the organization that puts on SPIF. Eight new telecom companies were chosen for these honours, reflecting their innovation, execution, management, and technologies in 2010. After being screened by Telecom Council Steering Committees, they were selected to present to the SPIF or other Telecom Council meetings. Startups chosen to present were “selected for having ideas, relevance, and traction that most appeal to our carriers from around the globe,” according to a press release.

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